


Obscurity

by UrbanHymnal



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanHymnal/pseuds/UrbanHymnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because words were magic, because they only would come out when they had the right feel and sound, he couldn’t say simple things like: Dad, leave Harry alone for once or Hey, Amy, do you fancy coming out to dinner with me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obscurity

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [За гранью слов](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336924) by [Rimmaara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rimmaara/pseuds/Rimmaara)



 

 

“My life is a reading list.”

\--John Irving, _A Prayer for Owen Meany_

The truth of the matter was that it took quite some time for the Watsons to figure it out. Harry talked constantly, about everything. Birds, trees, colours, clothes-- everything that popped into her head flowed out of her mouth. She spent one summer insisting that tadpoles were in the sewage system and desperately needed to be rescued and, during one memorable event, tried to get down a sewer drain to collect them. And so Mr. and Mrs. Watson, both kind but worn in a way that all parents who have excitable children are, failed to notice that John, sweet, kind, quiet John, was...well, far too quiet.

****

He had, of course, cried in the way that all babies do, but he had never been a bother for his parents. Mrs. Watson remarked to her friends that he was the exact opposite of Harry and wasn’t that a lovely little blessing. No late nights filled with walking around the flat, bouncing a baby through angry teething or uncomfortably hot nights. He approached all things with a silent sternness. Bottles, nappies, and burps were all greeted with the same little frown. Mr. Watson joked that John was simply judging the world and finding it fairly wanting. (And was generally grateful that John allowed him an unbroken night’s sleep because Harry loved to wake the household at five o’clock sharp every morning with a good bounce on her parents’ bed-- even on days off.)

****

But then two turned into three and then three into four and John remained stubbornly silent.

****

“What’s this then?” Harry said, blue brick held firmly in her hand. “Go on. Tell me. I bet you can’t.”

 

John stared at her and the brick. When the staring went on for too long in Harry’s opinion, she huffed and slapped the brick down into his chubby hands.

****

“Everyone knows what that is. Even the thick kids. It’s a brick, Johnny. Say it. Say brick.” She picked up another one, red this time, and tapped it with her finger. “Brrriiiick. The one you have is blue, but the one I have is red, but they are both still bricks. I like blue better, but you can have that one if you tell me what it is you are holding.”

 

John wrinkled his forehead and looked down at the brick. He knew what it was. Could even have told her that it was not just blue, but blue like the sky the last time they went to the park. Blue like his trainers. Blue like running down a hill and feeling the air whistle past your ears. But the words were not there. What was there instead was sensation, bright and lovely. The brick was not a brick. Such a silly thing to call it, to narrow something down into just a collection of sound. It was...well, it was earth and bark and sawdust. It was strength and balance. It was beginning and completion. It was delight. It was rough, smooth, and gnawed. And oh, what stories could be found in the gnawing. That little bit of corner placed between tiny teeth, tasting all of that along his tongue and to feel it on his gums. How could he possibly make all of that into just one simple word? Impossible.

 

Eventually, Harry grew tired, slammed the brick down, and stomped off. As she did, she shouted to her mother, who was steadfastly pretending not to pay attention to the exchange: “He’s stupid. Why is he stupid?”

****

It was a cruel thing to say, but, like with all things that children say, rang with a brutal honesty that cut to the heart of the problem, which was that Mrs. Watson was beginning to fear the same thing.

 

* * *

 

****

There were tests: pokes, prods, flashcards, buzzes, and scans. Adults took to muttering over his head and slamming doors. And in the end, the conversation went like this:

****

“What do you mean there is nothing wrong with him physically?” His father had taken to shouting as of late. John wasn’t entirely sure why, but he thought sometimes it had to do with staggering, cigarette smoke, and the funny smell that lingered on his father just under his ever-ready peppermints.

****

“Just as I said, Mr. Watson. We cannot find anything physically wrong with him. His brain is perfectly normal. Nothing wrong with his hearing. No problems with his vocal cords. Simply put, John should be talking, but he just isn’t.” The doctor hesitated. “You have spoken with...?”

****

“Of course! And they said he was perfectly healthy as well.” His mother had the strangest wobble in her voice any time she had to discuss the other doctors. John preferred those doctors. They had colouring books, though they had a tendency to ask a lot of questions as if they hadn’t yet caught on to the fact that John could not talk. Perhaps they thought they could trick him if they asked him the right question.

****

“I think it is perhaps time that we start discussing alternatives. John will be old enough to start school soon, and it would be in his best interest if he attended a school that was aware of his special needs.” The small collection of brightly coloured paper caught John’s eye. He knew that the lines and squiggles meant words but he hadn’t yet figured out how to understand those words as he did people when they spoke, but these seemed important, more important than colouring or bricks, and so he tugged on his mother’s arm until she let him hold the paper in his hand. He pressed his nose as close to the paper as if he could absorb the knowledge through touch alone.

****

“Have you begun working with John on his reading?”

****

Reading, much to John’s annoyance, took being able to speak. His mother sat next to him and dragged her fingernail across the page, slowly forming each word as she went. He nodded at dogs and kittens, mittens and hats, and brightly coloured trolleys. But none of the words spoke to him. They lay flat and lifeless on the page, as useless to him as Harry’s insistence that he called a brick a brick. The thing wasn’t the same as the word and he was growing annoyed with everyone saying that it was. It left him tired and cross at the world, but he practiced, his mouth trying to form each word, until his head ached with knowledge.

****

Until one day, he sat at the breakfast table, feeling most cross about the state of the omelette his mother was fixing for him. It had green things in it and he despised green things. He tried slapping his hand on the table and pointing, twisting his face in anger, but his mother simply repeated the much hated phrase: “Words, John.”

****

He opened his mouth to scream because words were never there but, for once, they were. Words. Not just words, but a sentence, a beautiful lovely sentence that curled happily like a cat around his vocal cords before leaping out of his mouth:  “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”

****

John felt much more satisfied. It was not exactly what he wanted to say, but it was _something_.

****

His mother froze, whisk dripping egg down onto the floor.

****

Seeing that he finally had her attention, he calmly placed his hands on the table, lowered his chin, and continued with the next sentence he could get to come out, voice deadly serious: “Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.”

****

It took some time for his mother to unfreeze, which was rather silly in his estimation because after all, he had finally done what she asked. Eventually, his mother slowly took off her apron and fetched a jar of honey and the already finished toast and set them down in front of him. She stared. He grinned. Words, it turned out, were magic.

 

* * *

 

 

And wasn’t that a bitch? Because words were magic, because they only would come out when they had the right feel and sound, he couldn’t say simple things like: _Dad, leave Harry alone for once_ or _Hey, Amy, do you fancy coming out to dinner with me?_ or any of the thousand other little things that popped up every day. Instead, he had to wait for the right moment. He had experimented, of course. At first, he thought any old words would do. He just needed to read them to be able to say but it seemed that whatever this was only wanted him to speak certain words. The worst part was that poetry seemed to work pretty well and wasn’t that just a new level of embarrassment? He could just hear the chuckles from his mates now if he walked up to a girl and spouted Keats at her. Or worse, fucking Shakespeare. Christ.  

****

And so he threw himself at the world, angry and horny and twisted up inside. Words, goddamnit. Words were nothing compared to what was going on in his gut, going on trapped in his balls. He wanted to yell at the world and so he did. Wild and intense and desperate and wordless. He wanted, dear God, he wanted. When his friends laughed and slapped him on the back and howled along with him, he smiled, and together their mantra became: _I’m seventeen and I’m crazy._

****

For a brief while he forgot what it felt like to be different and lonely and just simply existed as something untameable, unnameable.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t the only one like this. Well, not the only one with an affliction, as his parents had taken to calling it. He met a girl once who could only turn left. Her flat was a maze, everything tending towards the left. She planned each day on how long it would take her to make her circuitous route. How far did she need to overshoot it so she could eventually turn left into the shop she actually wanted to go into? He rather thought it was unfair that she could just take a cab to get past a lot of her problems or ask someone to lead her where she needed to go. He couldn’t even ask where the damn loo was.

****

While his mates went on to university, he lost himself in cheap warm beer and tumbles with girls who didn’t mind that he couldn’t string two words together. He lost himself in between walking through his front door and screams and shattered glass and he fled.

****

He found himself, briefly, in ranks, desert, and blood. The first medical book he held in his hands felt like his own cab, his way out, his work around, because there was something about medical jargon, so crisp and clean, like a river that flowed out of him. He’d never be a surgeon (and God, he knew he could have been a brilliant one because all the knowledge was there, if he could just get his voice to cooperate ), but he could follow orders and could bark back, short and blunt: _Apply pressure. Don’t move. Call for help._

****

In those terms, he was understood by everyone. No second glances, no confused looks. They heard and they jumped to obey. It felt different from his friends when he was younger. It wasn’t belonging; it was being respected. When he kept a man from bleeding out, no one cared that he couldn’t reply to their thanks with more than a grunt and a nod.  

 

* * *

 

He held Johnson’s insides together, and remembered the way the man had laughed for a good twenty minutes the first time John had rambled about the definition of crazy (Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to) at the end of a firefight. He remembered the way Johnson bent over, clutching his stomach as tears rolled down his face, shoulders shaking with laughter. He bent the same way when the bullet ripped through his body armour. “Oh God, oh God,” he said both times in between gasps for air.

****

John’s right hand was sticky with blood; his left arm was a shard-filled deadweight and the words he needed refused to come. They caught, covered in tar, down his throat. _Help_ , he tried to say, _we need help. Please, God, let me live._  But he choked on the only words that would come: “And so it goes.”

 

* * *

 

His dreams were filled with sheer drops into nothingness and his unit running towards them, heedless of the fall. He tried to shout, to warn them, but all that would come out was _poo-tee-weet_. He’d watch them plummet over and over and he could never catch them.

****

PTSD, they said. It’ll get better with time, they said. Poor bastard, they didn’t say.

****

They gave him papers and a box with his things. There was nothing more we could do, he imagined them saying. The bullet did too much damage. We’ve collected his things: a life reduced to a beat up duffle bag and a few odds and ends. We are sorry for your loss. He was the deceased and the bereaved. In the end, they buried him in a drab little flat, where no one came to visit.

****

“Communicating what you are feeling is the first step towards healing,” Ella said. She avoided the word ‘talking.’ He doubted he would talk about what happened to him even if he could.

****

“Have you tried writing it down? Your records say that you can write.”

****

It was true. He could write, but they didn’t say how hard it is for him to do so. They could not get the feeling of his hands shaking when he formed letters or the laborious way he typed. Tap. Tap. Tap. Torture and teeth pulling. The words would come, but only with a struggle. There seemed little point.

****

But he nodded and waited for the clock to tick down his time.

****

Despair worked its tendrils in him, cracking his thin-skin of control until, sitting in his bedroom, he found himself staring longingly at a gun.

****

He picked it up, opened his mouth, and, without really meaning to, said, “He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man.”

  
He sobbed then, broken, lonesome hound noises and wondered who the ‘us’ was.

 

* * *

 

Kind, easy-going Stamford took one look at him and said, “You look terrible. The last time I heard anything about you, you had run off to join the Army and were out there saving lives. What happened?”

****

“I used to get a big kick out of saving people’s lives. Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to die anyway,” John bit back.

****

“That doesn’t sound like the John Watson I know.”

****

But that’s the rub, wasn’t it? No one knows what John Watson really sounds like. Oh, they know his voice, could describe the way he parroted back lines, but could never know what he was really thinking, will never know his true intent. He wanted to tell Stamford to piss off, wanted to tell him to take his false friendliness (because really who would want John Watson as a friend?) and shove it. Instead he did the best thing he could do, which was awkwardly make his way to his feet and to limp away.

****

He had forgotten that Stamford was a bit like a puppy, eager to please, refusing to give up.

****

“John! Sorry, sorry. That was rude of me,” he huffed up next to him, face a little red from embarrassment and exertion. “Look, what I was trying to say was that I spoke to Harry recently. I know, I know. You two don’t get along. She didn’t give me the details, but she mentioned you were back in London and I thought, well, what with being on an army pension, you might be looking for a place to stay? It’s just that I know someone who is looking for a flatmate.”

****

John stared at him.

 

* * *

 

“I prefer to text.”

****

John’s skin itched. He didn’t own a mobile, didn’t see the need for one. Talking over a phone was ridiculous when you relied mostly on facial expression and gestures to get your point across. Texting suffered from much the same issue as writing, hampered further by his inexperience with typing on such a small screen. Harry at one point had tried to get him to use one and suggested programming stock phrases into it, but that had bothered him in a way he couldn’t name. He had so little control over how he talked to people, but at least the things he could say he had an emotional attachment to. Those few precious words always meant something, which he supposed was more than most people could say about the things that regularly came out of their mouths.

****

He shrugged, willing his cheeks not to burn, and smiled.

****

“Oh, right. Where are my manners? John Watson, this is my,” Stamford paused, obviously unsure of how to continue that line of thought. “This is Sherlock Holmes.”

****

John was fairly certain he had been looked at in ruder fashions in his life. People either pitied him, treated him like he was an idiot, or ignored him entirely. Sherlock, on the other hand, assessed him, quickly, from head to toe and then discarded the very notion of him.

****

“A potential flatmate, Mike? I know that it has been said that I am hard to live with”--Stamford snorted-- “but honestly, use your brain for once.” Sherlock brushed past John, and muttered something about corpses and riding crops, barely giving John a second glance. It was a brush off, pure and simple, and John, angry at his time being wasted, grabbed his arm and blurted: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

****

Oh, God. Seuss again.

****

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Dull.” He moved to pull away, flicked his eyes down to John’s wrist when John did not immediately let go, and paused. “Oh.”  A sort of light came on, a brilliant flash that lit up his eyes and John found himself desperately wanting to know what caused it. “Not dull. Not dull at all.”

 

* * *

 

John had been known as Stupid Watson, Mad Watson, Quiet Watson, and Forgettable Watson, but he has never really been known as just John. Even his parents tended to think of him in terms of his condition. His mum looked at him with pity and his father, when he bothered to think of his son at all, lamented wasted potential. They never really saw him, just bits and pieces, aspects of things that certainly were a part of him, but were not _him_.

****

Sherlock, for all his talk about not caring about people, actually saw John. In that little glance he gave to John’s pale wrist, he saw more of John than anyone else in his life had. He didn’t care that John didn’t talk much because outside a crime scene, Sherlock didn’t do much talking either. Sherlock never prompted him to use his words, nor did he cut him off when he did choose to share them. They found a rhythm in their communication: John in exasperated sighs, tense shrugs, teacups, and, with a strange increase in frequency, a variation of smiles; Sherlock in eyerolls, wide sweeping hand gestures, fidgets, slammed doors, and, with a direct correlation to John’s smiles, violin music. It wasn’t a horrible silence, full of uncomfortable looks and hand wringing, but a breathing, living, lovely silence.

****

There was, however, one sticking point.

****

John ignored the mobile at first. It wasn’t his and he had been raised to not pry into other people’s business. It dinged with a text message and then another. And another. He knew it wasn’t Sherlock’s phone because he never left the flat without it, so on the pretense that he was just trying to solve the mystery of who it did belong to, he picked it up.

****

There were a series of messages, each longer than the last:

****

_John. --SH_

 

_John, pick up the phone.--SH_

 

_I know you can hear it. You have a hyper awareness of sound--no doubt brought about by your father’s drinking and honed by your military service. So please, stop playing at polite and look at the phone.--SH_

****

John gritted his teeth.

****

_I suppose that you are now angry at me. Boring. You don’t have to respond to my texts, but if you’re reading this, I could use your assistance. I am locked in a trunk.--SH_

John nearly dropped the phone at that, but the text was quickly followed by directions. He didn’t even stop to throw a jacket on. John’s hands shook as he tried to type on the phone, throat closing up as he tried to get words to work their way out. He was panicking. His hand cramped, angry, white hot pain, as he hit send on the text that took him almost a full minute to compose.

****

_Kessttrade,_

****

No reply came. He bit his cheek, stopped running, and took a slow, deep breath. He fumbled with the phone until he managed to find the contacts, sagging with relief when he found Lestrade’s number listed.

****

_Sh kidbnapped herlp._ He then painstakingly typed in the address and hit send.

 

* * *

 

After the small pet shop had been swarmed by the police and after John had patted Sherlock down and found nothing more than a few bruises, John shoved the phone under Sherlock’s nose and glared. Hard.

****

“Oh, good. You have your phone.”

****

John felt his face grow red. They had discussed this. Or rather Sherlock kept bringing it up and John ignored him. He opened his mouth and then closed it, trying to get the right phrase to encapsulate his anger, when he heard a snicker from behind.

****

“Did you break your little parrot, Freak?” He didn’t know the man who said it, but he had heard it muttered before or at least variations of it. When you grow up different, insults were an unfortunate part of life. No sense in getting upset about it as it didn’t change anything, but he saw the storm building on Sherlock’s face. Whereas years of being singled out and picked on had taught John to be unnoticeable, it had taught Sherlock just the opposite. Sherlock had cultivated the ability to be the only thing people noticed in a room. Everything about him was built to be striking, terrifying, biting, awful, and wonderful.

****

He grabbed Sherlock’s wrist and pulled him out of the building, brushing past the officer with perhaps a harder shove than was needed, before Sherlock could deduce the officer’s life and parade around whatever embarrassing fact he had discovered.

****

The cool night air shocked his face, dousing his anger somewhat. Sherlock gave an undignified grunt at being pulled down a side alley, past prying eyes. Assured that they were alone, John rounded on Sherlock once more and slapped the phone against his chest.

****

“John, it is absolutely ridiculous that you refuse to own a mobile. I know you have some odd aversion to them, but they are absolutely necessary in our line of work.”

****

John pointed at the phone and shook his head, hissing out one long breath. What good was a phone to him? And if he couldn’t use one, then what good was he to the work?

****

Sherlock threw his hands into the air, face twisted in anger. “Words, John!”

****

They stared at each other, separate and alone in the resulting silence. Sherlock: hard, distant, and (always) cool. John: a bell struck, ringing with emptiness. He must have made a sound, hurt-filled, because Sherlock’s shoulders slumped, curling inward with the realization of what he said.

****

“You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me?” Refusing to stand there and be the one to console Sherlock, John straightened and marched away.

****

He had nowhere else to go, but home. Strange how quickly Baker Street had become home. So little time had passed between walking into Bart’s and now; yet, like a compass pointing steadfastly north, he always oriented himself towards home, towards Sherlock. Right now, he wanted to hate him. Of course they had never had the conversation (how could they?), but Sherlock still knew. Knew exactly what it was like to have someone try to force you to be a certain way, to perform on command. He might have not known that it had become a dreaded phrase of his childhood, spat out at him by parents and teachers alike as though he could change what he was through sheer repetition and vileness. Still Sherlock knew what it was to have someone slap his hand for being too curious, berate him for being supposedly inhuman, and have looks of fascination twist into looks of frustration when he didn’t bend.

****

He wandered through the city, shivering and wishing he had thought to grab a jacket earlier in his mad dash out of the flat. Just because he had nowhere else to go did not mean he had to return home right way. He sloshed through puddles and past neon signs, drowning in the laughs and shouts of others’. When he finally stomped up the steps of their flat, he couldn’t feel his fingers and he was glad for the distraction. Sherlock was not home and, hours later when John finally poured himself into bed, there was still no sign of him.

 

* * *

 

The creak of his door opening snapped him awake immediately. He relaxed when he recognized the distinctive outline of Sherlock, who hesitated at the door.

****

“John, I...,” he cleared his throat.

****

Deciding to save him from further torture, John sat up, turned the bedside lamp on, and shifted over to make room for Sherlock to sit. Sherlock leapt forward, throwing himself with the same care he showed the sofa downstairs.

****

“I apologize.”

****

John yawned and gestured for him to continue. So far this was unprecedented: Sherlock taking the time to apologize for something.

****

“I think your refusal to use a mobile phone is ridiculous, but I should have respected your opinion, even though it is stupid.”

****

Ah, there it was. John huffed and rolled over.

****

“John!” Sherlock leaned over until he could look at him. “It is simple fact. It did prove useful this time. I am not asking you to text like a teenage girl, but keeping the phone near you will allow me to contact you at a moment’s notice. Besides, you were able to use it to fetch Lestrade. It is a tool that you can use. Perhaps not to the same extent as I do, but what if our positions had been reversed? How long before I would have known something had happened to you? I ask--yes, ask-- you to keep it with you. That is all.”

****

The biggest problem was that John had a hard time standing up to such an argument. Sherlock, damn him, was right. It had been useful and, despite his best efforts to squash it, a voice whispered, soft and seductive, of promises and hopes. What if he could use this to actually talk to someone? What if he could use his own words to tell Sherlock to piss off or tell him he was brilliant? He quashed the thought as it grew, reminding himself of how it had been like pulling teeth to type out what little he had.

****

Sherlock brushed his fingers, butterfly-light, against John’s arm. As a final point in his argument, he gently placed the phone on John’s bedside table and left John to puzzle out the problem on his own.

 

* * *

 

Despite what everyone else thought, Sherlock and John were not joined at the hip. John ran off unannounced just as often as Sherlock did, though he would have argued that he had a perfectly good excuse for why he didn’t say anything before leaving. There was sense to what Sherlock had said. They lived dangerous lives. It wasn’t the first time that one of them had been in danger and with both their tendancies to wander off, it was simply a matter of safety to carry around a mobile. 

****

He was sitting on a park bench, watching the birds fight over a bit of bread, when the first text came through. He started at the buzz, unused to the feeling of having a phone in his pocket and fumbled, fingers shaking at the thought that Sherlock had gone and done something else stupid.

****

_Bored. --SH_

_**** _

They had reached an agreement. Sherlock could text him, but John was not under any obligation to respond. Three more texts fired off, one after another, in a flurry that John envied.

****

_Where are you?--SH_

_**** _

Like a child. Though it did send a yellow curl of affection and amusement through him.

 

_I think I have figured out how Talbert was able to dissolve the evidence.--SH_

****

_How attached do you think Mrs. Hudson is to her tea set? --SH_

****

Amusement was quickly replaced with horror. 

 

_Noo. Sh du not touch. Bad._

****

_Excellent, you are paying attention to my messages! Stop on the way home and pick up some dinner. I have solved the case.--SH_

****

He knew he was being tricked, but he was finding it harder to care. It was a bit like having a whispered conversation with Sherlock, something just between the two of them, and his ears and spine prickled pleasantly at the thought of Sherlock leaning in to share his innermost thoughts. He felt-- well,...

 

* * *

 

But that wasn’t what really started it. The true start could be traced to a warm Saturday in June and to a single object. Sherlock was asleep in his bedroom after John shoved him there with an insistence that Sherlock likened to particularly stupid dog. Three days with little sleep and too much caffeine had made Sherlock into a monster of a man, snappish and frightful.

****

John, having actually slept during the case, picked his way through the flat, quietly cleaning. He was fairly certain that Sherlock could have slept through a circus marching through 221B, but quietness was in his nature and so everything he did was quiet.

****

He had just finished stacking a collection of magazines when he saw it hidden under the sofa (or more likely thrown there in a fit). The e-reader was surprisingly new and most definitely not his. He couldn’t afford one (Sherlock had learned to not to buy things for John without John’s approval)  and it was not the sort of thing Mrs. Hudson would own. That meant it had to be Sherlock’s. It shouldn’t be surprising that he had one, after all Sherlock was fond of technology as long as it was useful, but John had never seen him use one.

****

His curiosity got the better of him and he turned it on. And that was the start of it: that warmth that seeped through him, that pleasant curl in his stomach turning from yellow to a deep red-- something more than just fondness, because the e-reader was full of books John recognized. Books that John had read. Books that John had spoken to Sherlock. He tapped one and began to flip through it, tasting and hearing each line and the memories tied to them. But they hadn’t just been read. Sherlock had highlighted passages and made comments, all fixated on trying to figure out why John would use those particular lines and noting which books had a higher frequency of being quoted versus John’s mood at the time. He should have been angry at the invasion, should have been furious at being looked at like an experiment, and he would have been if it weren’t for one little note, tossed in amongst all the observations:

****

“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and colour of the right side.”

****

He recognized the quote. In direct opposition to every other relationship he had been in, Sherlock was trying to talk to him in his own language. He searched for a word to describe the feeling that was spreading through his limbs, but not a single one fit.

 

* * *

_The woman at the counter thinks you are attractive. Pity about the husband cheating on her and the rampant STI.--SH_

****

_Cud hav waited or nt said nything._

****

_No, I couldn’t have. She was going to flirt with you and then I would have had to deal with you taking even longer in line. If you had accidentally spewed poetry at her, it would have taken at least five more minutes for you to get back here with tea. --SH_

****

_Fcuk off, Sherlck._

****

_Genital warts, John.--SH_

 

_I don’t know why you persist on trying to find a job. You do realize that you have a pension, correct? And that Mycroft will do just about anything to keep me working cases? --SH_

_**** _

_Also, piss off, Mycroft.--SH_

_**** _

_Not pint. Ned work._

_**** _

_You do work. With me. I know you aren’t that stupid, John.--SH_

 

_John, might I commend you on your initiative in finding gainful employment? If I may be of any assistance, do let me know. --MH_

_**** _

_Piss off, Mycroft._

_**** _

_I see that your typing is improving, though you are picking up dreadful habits from my brother. One minute to type that out, yes? Much improved over the last time we spoke. Congratulations. --MH_

 

_Will you leave that ridiculous job now? I’ve managed to track down Jacobs.--SH_

_**** _

_Do NOT follow him by yourself._

_**** _

_Sherlock, Im sirius. Hes dangerous._

_**** _

_He’s getting away, John. Get here. Now.--SH_

_**** _

_omw_

 

* * *

 

“You mad bastard. What the hell were you thinking?” Lestrade’s face was close, too close. Lestrade’s eyes were squinted little slits and, judging by the persistent pounding in John’s head and the sticky feeling on his forehead, was preoccupied with figuring out where exactly the blood was coming from. “Running ahead like that? You could have been killed. You remember the part where you don’t actually work for Scotland Yard?”

****

John groaned and jerked his head away from Lestrade’s inspection. “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

****

“Don’t give me that! It may have been your case to start with, but it became mine when Holderby was killed. You and Sherlock thinking you could handle a madman without any back up, not even so much as a text message--I should haul your arse in. Now keep this on your forehead until we get someone to give you a proper look over.” Lestrade slipped a piece of gauze into John’s hand and guided it to his head.

****

At the mention of Sherlock’s name, John went still. He couldn’t see Sherlock flitting about because of Lestrade blocking his line of sight, nor could he hear his usually loud voice shouting at the police working the scene. “Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them.” He did the best he could to angle his voice up at the end to convey that he was asking a question.

****

Lestrade frowned for a moment as he tried to figure out what John was saying. It always took him a few seconds to get the jist, but John didn’t mind. At least Lestrade was trying to understand. “Sherlock?”

****

John nodded.  

****

“They are taking him to hospital. His arm is going to need a hell of a lot of stitches. Now stay there. I have a manhunt to orchestrate since you two managed to get bashed about, but didn’t catch our man.” The last was said with a quiet mix of exasperation and concern, a tone that John had learned in the past year to be uniquely Lestrade’s.

****

John staggered to his feet, ignoring Lestrade’s squawk of protest and the way his stomach roiled. He waved away the paramedics and, in his haste, would have started running had it not been for Mycroft’s car idling just past the police vehicles.

****

He wrenched the door open and flung himself inside, glaring at Mycroft until he waved at his driver to move the car.

****

“Ah, John. I assure you my brother is fine. I could hear him berating the paramedics for tending to him first, though I must say there were right in doing so. Though he is naturally pale, he usually does not tend towards that particularly shade of grey unless forced to eat something truly unpleasant.”  Mycroft studied his nails for a moment before continuing. “You and Sherlock made a mess of this one.”

****

John clenched his jaw, which only made his headache worse. He was sorely tempted to make a mess of the inside of Mycroft’s car. “You must recognize that there are two ways of fighting: by means of law, and by means of force.”

****

“Mm. Yes. Unfortunately, it is often necessary to resort to the second. And it seems that the two of you used more of it than usual, but then you were dealing with a man who believed himself to be entirely outside of the law. Thank goodness Scotland Yard was already en route or both of your injuries could have been much worse.” Mycroft smiled, thin, patronizing, and worried. Though he knew Mycroft cared for his brother, the emotion still caught John by surprise. Mycroft covered his perceived faux-pas by studying his mobile. “It appears we have found Jacobs. Please extend my apologies to Detective Inspector Lestrade for not being able to apprehend him alive.” He did not sound the least bit sincere in his apology and John was reminded of the first time they met.

****

The car pulled to a stop and just before he hopped out of the car, John turned to look at Mycroft.

****

“All men will see what you seem to be; only a few will know what you are—”

****

“And those few will not dare to oppose me. Fox and lion, John. Do let me know how Sherlock is, when you have a moment.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock was a lighthouse, a brilliant beam of pure light that fell on him, perfect and warming. They had a way of communicating that was like nothing he had ever experienced. Sherlock spoke, at length, but it was never like Harry. Harry talked to talk. She loved the sound of her own voice and while Sherlock’s voice was a pleasant rumble, there was always a point to it. And he never assumed that John had nothing to say. He would flick his eyes over to him, a quick assessment of whether or not he should pause and John came to love him for those brief little silences. When they texted, it was always quick and, barring a case, without point. Against all reason, Sherlock enjoyed small talk or maybe he just enjoyed small talk with John and those brief conversations lifted John as splendidly as any rooftop chase.

****

There were days, though, where Sherlock would slip down into the darkness and stare at nothing. He would fling himself around the flat, snarling at tea cups and papers, never satisfied with anything, until he would come to rest on the sofa. The days following the Jacobs case fell into that uncomfortable, frantic silence, punctuated by Sherlock’s frustration at his injury. Eventually, he emerged from the dark maze of his mind and looked around the flat as if seeing it for the first time.

****

“Why do you put up with me, John?”

****

It was an uncomfortable question because there were a million answers that John could give. John licked his lips and flexed his fingers, sorting out the right words. This was something else he had grown to like (love) about Sherlock: the man always waited for him to sort it out. Perhaps not patiently, but he did not goad him about using his words. That lesson had been learned well.

****

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off-- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”

****

“Shall I take to calling you Ishmael? Am I your ship, John?” Sherlock frowned. “Well, I am pleased to serve as your distraction.” He gave an imperious wave as if to signal that John’s words were an annoying buzz and nothing more.

****

John scowled and jumped up from his seat. No, no, no. All wrong. Sherlock wasn’t a distraction. Never a distraction. Well, he was. But the best kind of distraction. The type of distraction that made him forget about how lonely he was. He tugged at his short hair as if to pull the words out and paced. There were words. Right ones. Perfect ones and if he found them, he would make Sherlock understand. He felt a bit like he was going mad; he had never wanted to say something, anything, as badly as he did in this moment.

****

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, bullying the words to come, until the flesh between his teeth became raw. Gritting his teeth and keeping his eyes fixed anywhere other than Sherlock, he gestured where he generally thought him to be. His pacing picked up speed. “I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don’t know what it is, and I can’t make any use of the power.”

****

As he turned, a quick twist on his heel, he came face-to-face with Sherlock. Sherlock stared at his forehead as if reading all of his thoughts just from the crease in his brow. “I have upset you. I apologize. You were being serious.”

****

He jerked his head in response. The words were tangled up because Sherlock was safety and danger wrapped together. Drowning and harbor.

****

“Let me try again: Why do you put up with me, John?”

****

He took a deep breath and thought, willing the right words to come out. Sherlock was like the brick from his childhood. He was running, winded and elated; he was laughter at crime scenes and lingering cigarette smoke; he was brilliant, sharp edged madness.

****

_Oh._ He wrapped his fingers around Sherlock’s robe and pulled him down to meet his gaze.

****

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

****

He held him there, willing Sherlock to understand, for him to pull his thoughts, pure and no one else’s, from his mind. Slowly, oh so painfully slowly, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Sherlock’s. “How sincerely you did love me, and endeavor to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own.”

****

He felt Sherlock tensing up, mind whirring away, before relaxing under his touch. His hands came to tentatively rest on John’s waist.

****

“A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses,” Sherlock answered.

****

John laughed, a pure and lovely sound that he hadn’t known he was even capable of making. And that was Sherlock; he made things happen. He once said that John amplified him, gave him focus, but John felt that they were caught in a loop, feeding each other exactly what the other needed in order to flourish.

****

John pulled Sherlock closer and buried his nose against his neck, a thousand and one stories tickling at John’s nose. Tentatively, he kissed Sherlock there, where mystery and adventure met, tucked up against the sounds and sensations of violin. He didn’t linger, didn’t box Sherlock in with his arms, just hugged him once and started to pull away. He didn’t get far as Sherlock tangled his fingers in the cotton of John’s shirt. Sherlock held him for a moment, hesitancy in his arms, before kissing the top of his head (and John wondered at the stories Sherlock found there, hidden in the scent of his cheap shampoo and the texture of his greying hair). He turned from John then, snatching up his laptop, and nudged John impatiently until he sat and put his hands on the keyboard.  Sherlock said nothing more and wandered off into the kitchen. Soon the sounds of experiments filled the flat. That was love, more so than any embrace could telegraph.

****

John sat and stared at the blinking cursor, curled his hands, and then ever-so-slowly, tentatively typed:

****

_When I first met Sherlock, he told me my life story._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you are curious to see where all the quotes came from, check out my response to the first comment on this story. I have listed them all in order and included stories that were also generally referenced. (I'd love to hear how many of the quotes you recognized on your own!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for Obscurity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/816459) by [moonblossom graphics (moonblossom)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonblossom/pseuds/moonblossom%20graphics)




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